Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Origins of SageMath; I am leaving academia to build a company [pdf]

wstein.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 202 posts

Re: The Origins of SageMath; I am leaving academia to build a company [pdf]

#91

Post by ssivark »

If you're reading this @WilliamStein, firstly, kudos for the whole effort. I think the providing Sage as cloud math software is a powerful strategy, especially with the trend of end users preferring low power devices.

I have some thoughts regarding the comment on Slide15 (making Sage good for some applications): I see that python and Jupyter are very popular for machine learning and allied computations. Can SAGE leverage this to provide a service that a large audience would happily pay for -- and then use that to bootstrap a full fledged mathematical software? (Also, on that note, is there any coherence between the leaders of Sage and Jupyter?)

Re: The Origins of SageMath; I am leaving academia to build a company [pdf]

#92

Post by jordigh »

Will, I have been looking for ways to build a company around GNU Octave too. If you find a way to make money, please let me know. Matlab is one of the Ma's that needs a direct replacement. There's so much free Matlab code out there that needs a free environment to run on.

Re: The Origins of SageMath; I am leaving academia to build a company [pdf]

#93

Post by x0x0 »

carlob wrote: post #90
bitwize wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why when Big Bang Theory debuted, I thought Sheldon Cooper was specifically supposed to be a parody of Stephen Wolfram. In math, how you came by the results you came by is always relevant. Don't tell mathematicians they don't need to know that. It's their job to know that.

Well, no. They are not at all alike. Stephen Wolfram has a lot more _people skills_ than Sheldon Cooper. Sheldon Cooper is the stereotype of the Asperger scientist who succeeds despite his inability to interact with people, while Stephen Wolfram has been at the helm of a tech company for 30+ years, and that's not something you can really do without having to interact with other people.

An acquaintance who worked directly for him would disagree with you.

Re: The Origins of SageMath; I am leaving academia to build a company [pdf]

#94

Post by dharmon »

x0x0 wrote: post #71
dharmon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, of course, and the two little words "his group" don't do justice to the army of PhD, masters, and undergraduate students who spent their time on this massive codebase. But in this case, and in the context of the OP, it was Davis's oversight and possibly tangible sacrifices (I don't know the details of his career) that made it possible. Each time we use some numerical methods and it Just Works, we should…

I heard (and hope it's true!) Prof Davis got a well-deserved license fee from MathWorks... Prof Doug Lea at Oswego is another unsung hero who has done a ton for programming and particularly parallel programming. A big chunk of java's std library is copyright Josh Bloch and Doug Lea. In particular, Prof Lea built jsr166.

Yeah, he licenses SparseSuite out for commercial use.

His personal payout would be very tiny (if any at all), after U of F's take and money his lab gets. But at least its some funding to keep his lab going.

Re: The Origins of SageMath; I am leaving academia to build a company [pdf]

#95

Post by peterarmstrong »

ianai wrote: post #76
peterarmstrong wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the way, another way to get financial support for an open source project is to sell a short tutorial book. For example, the creator of Laravel did this on Leanpub (disclosure: I'm a co-founder of Leanpub) and did pretty well: https://leanpub.com/laravel is #7 in lifetime earnings on Leanpub. (Also, one of the core contributors on Laravel has done even better: https://leanpub.com/codebright is #2 in lifetime earnin…

Even more if you can tie it in with enough topics for a textbook.

Hopefully one day textbook prices can return to a sane level, say between $30 and $80. Today's textbook racket (I don't want to call it a market) is obscene.

Re: The Origins of SageMath; I am leaving academia to build a company [pdf]

#97

Post by algeom »

cs702 wrote: post #57

It's SHAMEFUL that academics like Stein who dedicate their lives to developing amazing open-source software do not get funding and frequently fail to get tenure. These individuals truly are making the world better!

Most academics do not get funding or tenure. Most funded academic mathematicians lose funding at some point. The funding rate for NSF grants in mathematics is certainly less than 33%, and one can only submit a standard proposal once per year. The competition is FIERCE. (I've been on panels: it is terrifying to see who doesn't get funded.) Ask any mathematician -- theorem prover or software writer -- about excellent people she knows who have lost their grants. You will instantly get multiple examples.

Mathematicians who write software are no more likely to be "truly making the world better" than those who prove theorems and teach hundreds or thousands of students every year.

I'm not saying anything about Stein here. He's a rare mathematician: strong on theory and practice, a passionate advocate for his causes, and a respected teacher. But there is a danger of missing the real point here -- most good things don't get funded or recognized. This has gone on for centuries. The funding situation now in the US (for both theory and practice) is better than it has been almost everywhere for almost all time.

Re: The Origins of SageMath; I am leaving academia to build a company [pdf]

#98

Post by carlob »

x0x0 wrote: post #93
carlob wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, no. They are not at all alike. Stephen Wolfram has a lot more _people skills_ than Sheldon Cooper. Sheldon Cooper is the stereotype of the Asperger scientist who succeeds despite his inability to interact with people, while Stephen Wolfram has been at the helm of a tech company for 30+ years, and that's not something you can really do without having to interact with other people.

An acquaintance who worked directly for him would disagree with you.

I still do and I beg to differ. I'm not saying he's the most personable human being I've met but he's certainly not autistic like Sheldon.

Re: The Origins of SageMath; I am leaving academia to build a company [pdf]

#99

Post by dcposch »

cs702 wrote: post #57

It's SHAMEFUL that academics like Stein who dedicate their lives to developing amazing open-source software do not get funding and frequently fail to get tenure. These individuals truly are making the world better!

I think nontraditional research organizations like YC Research and Google's Project Zero can solve this problem.

--

Open source basic infrastructure -- everything from Sage to OpenSSL -- suffers from a market failure.

We rely on these foundational projects for billions of dollars a year in commerce, but they often get minimal funding and are supported by semi-broke volunteers working in anonymity.

* GPG is maintained by one guy, who was about to give up before a few people threw coins in his tip jar after this story a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9003791

* OpenSSL was comically underfunded and underappreciated until Heartbleed happened and people remembered how much it matters

Stein's story is powerful and shows how neither traditional companies nor universities help here. In the world of math software:

* The companies created a bunch of closed-source walled gardens (Mathematica, Matlab, etc).

* The universities were unwilling to support free and open tools. They gave tenure and support only for authors of research papers, not tools, no matter how useful or widely deployed.

Even the guy who made NumPy and SciPy didn't get recognition for it---wtf.

I think that these new, independent organizations with rich patrons can fill in the gap. Organizations like YC Research, Project Zero, and Canonical.

We need more of them.

Re: The Origins of SageMath; I am leaving academia to build a company [pdf]

#100

Post by banach »

dcposch wrote: post #99
cs702 wrote: post #57

It's SHAMEFUL that academics like Stein who dedicate their lives to developing amazing open-source software do not get funding and frequently fail to get tenure. These individuals truly are making the world better!

I think nontraditional research organizations like YC Research and Google's Project Zero can solve this problem. -- Open source basic infrastructure -- everything from Sage to OpenSSL -- suffers from a market failure. We rely on these foundational projects for billions of dollars a year in commerce, but they often get minimal funding and are supported by semi-broke volunteers working in anonymity. * GPG is maintained…

These projects are a crucial part of the infrastructure of the modern information society. The solution to a lack of funding for these things is not charity from rich patrons, but governmental investment based on taxes.
Post reply on HN